Circumstances can certainly make life unhappy. But a part – often a big part – of unhappiness comes from our own thinking, behavior and habits. In this article I’d like to share 7 of the most destructive daily habits that can create quite a bit of unhappiness within and in your own little world. But I’ll also share what has worked, what has helped me to minimize or overcome these habits in my life. 1. Aiming for perfection. Does life has to be perfect before you are happy? Do you have to behave in a perfect way and get perfect results to be happy? Then happiness will not be easy to find. Setting the bar for your performance at an inhuman level usually leads to low self-esteem and feeling like you are not good enough even though you may …show more content…
If I do drift off then I focus only on my breathing for a few minutes or I sit still and take in what is all around me right now with all my senses for a short while. By doing either of those things I can realign myself with the present moment again. 4. Comparing yourself and your life to others and their lives. One very common and destructive daily habit is to constantly compare your life and yourself to other people and their lives. You compare cars, houses, jobs, shoes, money, relationships, social popularity and so on. And at the end of the day you pummel your self-esteem to the ground and you create a lot of negative feelings. How to overcome this habit: Replace that destructive habit with two other habits. Compare yourself to yourself. First, instead of comparing yourself to other people create the habit of comparing yourself to yourself. See how much you have grown, what you have achieved and what progress you have made towards your goals. This habit has the benefit of creating gratitude, appreciation and kindness towards yourself as you observe how far you have come, the obstacles you have overcome and the good stuff you have
You look at famous people. You say, oh wow, he is able to run a mile in under 5 minutes. This is a great accomplishment. But sometimes, there is more to achieve in life.
If they are in danger then they can not move up the scale of happiness. Next is the love of other and after that is esteem needs. When all these are met then the person is able to climb the ladder even farther and become even more happy. Not only that, they will be able to reach transcendence which is the top and this will enable them adapt to a wide variety of situations better (294).
That kind of action makes them become their ideal selves, it is the effort to reach their expectation to get happy.
Arguably, the happier an individual is, the better the quality of their life, and the better off they are. But despite this, there are people who will even argue that lower levels of happiness are the best because you maintain the ability to progress in life and your motivation is still present. Although many people will only see two sides to this argument, there is a totally different view that provides the optimal quality of life and the most beneficial outcome in the big picture; and that is moderate happiness. Cliff Oxford’s essay “High Performance Happy” evaluates the effect that an individual’s happiness has on their beneficiality to society and how you should always strive to be the happiest you can be. Oxford’s main point is that
Everyone would feel obliged to be better than the next person in order to keep themselves content. If one would result in being the “best”, then dictatorship might arise like in the text, “And the roads of the world will become as veins which will carry the best of the world’s blood to my threshold. And all my brothers, and the Councils of my brothers, will hear of it, but they will be impotent against me.” (104) As a result, people would become negative and believe that they would never be more successful than the next person.
I believe that pursuing happiness as a goal has detrimental effects. As a society, we tend to believe that we need to be full of joy at all times, but that isn't realistic - life happens. By attempting to be cheery all the time, you will never be genuinely content. You will always be searching for more and won't be satisfied with what you have, creating a permanent cycle of gloom rather than bliss.
Not knowing how to control our pride and judging others will lead to destruction. So always practice the habit to be kind, listen more and accept our mistakes, in this way we will be loved by people and we will have a delightful
Can the actions of an individual pursuing happiness affect the lives of others around them? “ The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.” 一 Eric Hoffer. When seeking for better in life, many end up disappointed and unhappy.
OVERCOMING PERFECTIONISM “Perfection is annihilation. It paralyses us from working from the heart. Humans by nature are not perfect and imperfections are what makes the world beautiful.” Mistakes Are Normal One of the very first things you must reflect on is to accept the fact that mistakes are meant to be made.
THESIS: As a product of society’s “equal” meritocracy, we must find a scale for our actions by comparing our successes and failures to others, creating status anxiety, resulting in our idea of success being relative to our peer’s success. We base our own self worth and value too much on the outside influences and how others view us. We can no longer look in the mirror and see ourselves as we are, we unconsciously compare ourselves to what is “perfect” is based on ideals from our friends, family, and the media. We are constantly being presented with the image of perfection and the steps and rules needed to achieve it.
I understand we have high goals so we can strive to achieve the best results, but it seems like it’s always not good
Over time, I grew up and became aware of my surroundings. I became very observant of everyone around me. I liked to watch everyone and how they did certain things. By doing this, it made me compare myself to others. With social
Thus your ideas of self develop through time because we are constantly comparing ourselves to others. Festinger goes on to say that self comparison takes place because people have the need for self-evaluation and they evaluate themselves by comparing their appearance and abilities with these of other people. (). Social comparison can be defined as “comparative judgments of social stimuli on particular content dimensions” (). Thus by comparing ourselves to other we re-evaluate our own identity and ultimately achieve affirmation.
According to them, there are three dominant forms of perfectionism, only one of which will be discussed here, and that is self-oriented perfectionism. Although self-oriented perfectionists tend to be overly critical of themselves as they strive to meet unrealistic standards, research shows that they excel in making
From time to time, refer to your plan to remind yourself of your aims and to fire your motivation. Written goals will make you feel more serious about and connected to your aims and it will also free you from having to work out every day what your goals are. This will save you time which you can then use on fulfilling your self-improvement